Oracle Blog

The Test Drive: Chhandomay on Sun Product Reviews

Monday Nov 30, 2009

Outspark
is an entertainment services company that publishes and operates
online multi-player social games. These free games are used by
millions of video gamers around the world every year so Outspark
maintains game servers in San Jose, California, and Andover,
Massachusetts in addition to Web servers in Oakland, California.

In May
2008, Outspark began
looking to
address operational problems with its game servers, which needed
better performance and uptime. Outspark was also experiencing
problems with its Web servers which were having repetitive hardware
issues. Additionally, with an upcoming launch of new games, Outspark
was anticipating a traffic spike and needed new server technology
that was more scalable and would help minimize operational costs.

In July 2008 Outspark decided on a
complete solution from Sun under the Sun
Startup Essentials program, which provides startups with a
combination of hardware, software, and support at a discount. Through
the Sun
Startup Essentials program Outspark purchased Sun
Fire X2250 servers to host its online games, as well as several Sun Fire X2200 M2
servers and Sun Fire
X4150 servers while Sun provided ongoing technical support and
hosted Web services through Sun partner NaviSite.

The Sun
Fire X2250 server gave Outspark the power it needed to manage its
game servers while using significantly less power than the previous
Outspark hardware. Outspark has also successfully reduced its
overall operational costs because it has a completely managed
solution with infrastructure and technical support from Sun. Luc
Suryo, Chief of Network and Systems Operations at Outspark, noted: “With
this solution, we are able to reduce costs while also
getting the capacity, speed, and availability we need to support our
game and Web servers.”